


the white of her silken dress

by cartoonmoomba



Series: I walked around the world until I found my gravestone [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: AU: WoL, F/M, More stuff, and headcannons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 04:14:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8313616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartoonmoomba/pseuds/cartoonmoomba
Summary: She shines as brightly as their sun once did, burning at his gaze until he is forced to look away and there she remains, pulsing at the peripherals of his vision. Her Light is heat to the absolute zero of what remains of his empty world and the blood in his veins sings out to touch her and cradle her in his arms.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Final Fantasy XIV does not belong to me.
> 
> I feel like this might be the start of a short series. Reads like a sequel to my previously posted "the kiss of the salt-sweet sea". Fun backstory of my character featured (Lieal Fhey): before I revamped her profile, she was a dancing girl in Ul’Dah who found her calling in the Conjurers Guild. Nowadays she’s being developed as having lost her lover during the Calamity, and to add salt to the wounds, is no longer able to remember him – only that he existed and that there is now a void in her heart that can’t be satisfied. My headcannon for the Warriors of Darkness has run wild, including the Shards being almost a mirror world of the Source. 
> 
> Make of that what you will. :>

_the white of her silken dress_

_._

_._

She shines as brightly as their sun once did, burning at his gaze until he is forced to look away and there she remains, pulsing at the peripherals of his vision. Her Light is heat to the absolute zero of what remains of his empty world and the blood in his veins sings out to touch her and cradle her in his arms. She is the flame and he is the moth drawn ever further in; she is the warm hearth to his frozen soul and when she gazes at him it's like the stars exploding all at once. 

What is left of his Mother Crystal beats against his rib cage in an attempt to ever get closer to the Source. Like a child crying for its mother, like a lover waiting for her sailor out at sea. Late at night he imagines her arms wound tight around his shoulders and he shudders at the perceived heat he can almost feel; what he wouldn't do to feel alive again. What he wouldn't give to go home to his family. 

(Kill her, the answer remains. Snuff out the inferno blazing at the heart of the Source and you will find peace.) 

 .

 .

By the light of the moon he goes up the winding stairs to where her apartment resides in a tower, the shadows on his face playing tricks over his expressions. First he is one betrothed to Darkness; then the clouds shift and he is once again a warrior of Her Light. And in the grey area where there is neither full darkness nor light, he is just Arbert. Arbert the fisherman's boy. Arbert who was too curious and too good and saved the world too many times. Arbert who killed himself on his own axe to further the prosperity of his home; the same axe he now carries across his back, the cold steel waiting for its next opponent.

(She almost reminds him of a girl he met long ago at the Inn of his Ul'Dah, who laughed shyly when his friends called her over for a dance and pointed to him; he almost remembers the sway of her hips and the paleness of her skin, glowing, and the brush of her ashen hair against his cheek as she leaned down low to whisper in his ear. 

"The Scions can be found where the wild roses bloom," her lips pressed against the nape of his neck as she dipped lower, ever lower, brushing at the collar of his shirt. His skin burning where her lips graze it and his friends' bellowing laughter. "Tell them a dancing girl sent you."

They had their Scions, too; they had their heroes, and their villains, and this world is just a smidgeon too strange to look like his own.)

The Warrior of Light is sick in her bed with a fever when he enters. No wards are present and he wonders why that is - is she too stupid, too brave or simply too weak? He cannot imagine her friends knowing of this oversight of hers; they would fortify her place of dwelling with every possible measure there is. Or perhaps that is _why_ there is such oversight - the friends do not know of this place that overlooks the flower fields of Gridania, where the creek sings sweetly into the night beneath her windows. Perhaps this place is hers alone.

(Arbert remembers wanting such a thing, such privacy; but Arbert has to be no more, he must be a man of steel who will not hesitate to strike down the girl whose light pulses at his eyelids every time he tries to sleep.)

Her light is dimmer as she sleeps curled in her sheets in a swathe of moonlight. The hearth is smoldering under a Fire Crystal which gleams at him, deep red and orange. He imagines striking her down then, the white of her sheets becoming that red and orange under the firelight and moon's gaze—

He stands over her. His hands itch for his axe as if he already can feel its heavy weight and the pull of it sinking into her flesh. It would be so easy for the Warrior of Darkness to do this; so perfect and simple is this situation presented to him.

The Warrior of Darkness yearns. Arbert the fisherman's boy remembers the press of her hot lips against his that night on the pier and hesitates. The girl continues to shift in her sleep; she turns and he catches her face, flushed brightly under the clutches of illness. _The Warrior of Light bested by a common cold_ , Arbert thinks with grim musings. There is a flutter of her eyelashes against red cheeks and then her eyes are open and gazing at him, sleep-muddled and grey in the dark of the room. 

"Are you a dream?" She asks him in a voice that speaks of still being not yet woken. "Or perhaps a nightmare?" Her chest rises under her sheets as she breathes, the soft swell of one shoulder dipping in the moonlight. Her hair is ashen in the light and her pale skin glows, glows, just like that dancing girl whispering secrets into his ear a lifetime ago.

"You are not afraid to die," Arbert speaks the words he's been holding in his chest since that moment on the pier she had walked to him and kissed him. His lips still burn with chill and heat, a war of senses of his deathly state against her Light. He shifts on his feet, watching her watch him.

A slow smile spreads on her face, large and bitter even in the throes of fever. "I am not afraid to die," she tells him word for word. "Many have tried and all have failed... All have failed." She trails off into a cough that wrecks her entire body. She shakes under the sheets and the colour in her cheeks rises. When she opens her eyes again, she stares into a world beyond him. 

"I think you look like him," she tells the air, some sort of ghost, with a softness in her voice that makes him quake. "That smile I can't remember..." Her eyes flutter shut and a sigh escapes her. "The man in Ul'Dah, at the Sultana's Gate..." 

She sleeps once more then, more world-weary girl than fearsome Warrior of Light. Arbert wonders how old she is, how this mantle fell onto her shoulders and how does she bear to carry it. He wonders about the souls of the dead she carries and how she manages the expectations of those still living. He wonders who this man is, who shares a smile with him, to have deserved such love that carried in her voice. 

He wonders about the nightmares she must have and the way she does not fear him or his axe and those dragons he has seen her ride ( _Dragons!_ The man that is still Arbert marvels) but most of all he wonders of her Light, the way it burns brightly even when she sleeps and the warmth that eludes his fingers, which want for heat—

He catches himself with one hand outstretched to where the bare skin of her shoulder is. Arbert cringes; the Warrior laughs at his weakness. He gazes down at this girl – no, woman, he will not demean her as such after all she has wrought – and resists the urge that pulls him ever closer. His axe presses into his back, a chill seeping into his skin even through layers of furs and leathers.

 .

 .

Outside, the man whose friends know him as Urianger awaits. “You did not do it,” he observes to Arbert. The moon casts shadows on the mask on his face, playing tricks with his expressions. The moon recedes and he is a traitor to his Scions; the light waxes and Arbert has doubts.

As does the moonlight, so too does Arbert wane and the Warrior come forth. “It would not have been a challenge,” the Warrior sneers and shoulders past the Elezen. Lavender Beds whispers into his ears a soothing lullaby of flower-scent and the promise of a waterfall nearby. The Warrior almost pauses in his purposeful strides, hindered by the man he used to be – the one who would pause and enjoy the dark sky, and stand guard outside the ill Warrior’s tower instead of lurking like a murderer with axe in hand.

Behind him, the Traitor ( _traitor?_ ) scoffs under his breath. “The heart seeketh equilibrium,” he whispers into the night, perhaps to the man, perhaps only for the distant stars to hear.

 _Equilibrium indeed_ , Arbert thinks _(the dancing girl in Ul’Dah, the flushed cheeks of the Source’s Warrior as she slumbers and his own heart, no longer beating against his ribcage_ ) and submits his body to the flow of Aether. It carries him far and in the split-second moment where he is the Lifestream and the Lifestream is he, he yearns: for the heat, for her warm touch and those lips pressed against his own, breathing life into the shade of the man he once used to be.

 


End file.
